RACING:NOT FOR 102 years has a reigning English monarch won the world's most famous flat race but Carlton House will almost certainly start favourite to provide a perfect picture-postcard result for Queen Elizabeth in today's Investec Epsom Derby.
The impact of the queen owning the Derby favourite can be gauged by how even a dramatic last-minute decision by the London Court of Appeal this morning as to whether or not Kieren Fallon will be allowed ride Aidan O’Brien’s Recital in the big race can’t quite shift Carlton House from centre stage.
Normally headlines and Fallon go together like Tattenham Corner and hard luck stories but even if the High Court decision had gone against him, the Co Clare-born rider might still have struggled for billing today.
It is 30 years since racing’s most prestigious owner last had a runner in the Derby and like everything else Church Parade only had a distant view of Shergar. It is 58 years since Aureole got closest of all to emulating Minoru’s 1909 Derby triumph for King Edward VII, by finding only Pinza too good. So for a sport desperate for positive headlines, a Derby victory for the queen would be a boost even more valuable than such a win would make Carlton House.
A dozen horses will play the roles of popular spoilsports, including a quartet from O’Brien’s yard that also includes Seville, Treasure Beach and the outsider Memphis Tennessee, who will be ridden by the champion trainer’s 18-year-old son, Joseph.
A win for any of them would be a 16th Irish-trained success in the race that has defined the thoroughbred industry more than any other and John Magnier’s Coolmore team also has the not insubstantial back-up of the French-based Pour Moi, who the perennial French champion trainer Andre Fabre has described as his best ever chance of winning the Derby.
In straight form terms, though, all the opposition look to be fighting the odds. Carlton House’s victory over Seville in the Dante was emphatic and came with the promise of more to come.
The colt given as a present to the queen by Sheikh Mohammed looked a straightforward pick. But a knock to an ankle on Monday has shaken such a belief.
If Carlton House is 100 per cent, he is a worthy favourite. And his trainer Michael Stoute is confident enough about that to run him. But he is short odds for a horse that banged an ankle only five days ago and if any course is designed to uncover a potential physical problem it is Epsom’s unique switchback challenge.
If racing has a lot riding on a Carlton House victory, O’Brien will relish a victory for one of his runners. Those declaring after High Chaparral won in 2002 – a year after Galileo – that O’Brien would be still waiting for a third Epsom victory nine years later would have been in a minority.
Recital is his main hope but talented as the colt is, he looked far from straightforward in the Derrinstown and the idea of him lugging left down the camber in the straight is not difficult to imagine.
On the back of Carlton House’s injury scare there could be value to be had elsewhere in this year’s Derby and it may come in the form of the second French hope, Vadamar.
The colt has always been highly rated by the Aga Khan’s team and looked a trifle unlucky behind Pour Moi in the Prix Greffulhe when checked a couple of furlongs out. He returned with a cut and it looks significant that he is being given another crack at Pour Moi.
A first French win in 35 years may not be everyone’s idea of a perfect Derby story but Vadamar could be the bet.
